Immediate Release
Contact: Meredith Elorfi, Manager of Marketing and Communications
813/259-1736 / meredith.elorfi@tampamuseum.org
TAMPA MUSEUM ESTABLISHES PARTNERSHIP WITH MARTIN Z. MARGULIES
FOUNDATION AS IT LAUNCHES NEW FACILITY
Tampa, FL (September 9, 2009) – The Tampa Museum of Art has established a three-year
partnership agreement with the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation in Miami, FL, to exhibit works from its
world-renowned collection of contemporary art in the new museum facility in Tampa, opening February
6, 2010. “I’m extremely pleased to be able to showcase works from the Margulies Collection in a series
of exhibitions over the next several years,” says Todd D. Smith, executive director. “This partnership
will allow the residents of Tampa and visitors to our region an unprecedented opportunity to experience
leading edge works of contemporary art by artists from around the world. In addition, the partnership
affords the museum a unique opportunity to expand its educational offerings to address in greater depth
the issues that surround the creation and interpretation of the art of our time.”
According to the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation Curator Ms. Katherine Hinds, "Our
partnership with the new Tampa Museum continues our long history of collaboration with institutions
who share our mission of education in the arts. Their new facility serves as a catalyst for the Margulies
Foundation to develop programming and exhibitions that will stimulate interest in contemporary art as
well as provide a resource for the contemplation, enjoyment and study of all the arts."
The Hidden City, on view from the museum’s grand opening to the end of 2010, will be the first
exhibition from The Margulies Collection and will feature four artists with multi-media installations that
focus on the theme of urbanism over a three-decade period. Works by Donna Dennis (New York), Pedro
Cabrita Reis (Portugal), Marjetica Potrc (Slovenia), and Peter Bialobrzeski (Germany) will be featured
in The Bretta B. Sullivan Contemporary Art Gallery. “To open our new museum with a gallery devoted
to the discussions that surround urbanism makes a strong statement about the role we see for our
institution going forward. We want to be at the center of our community’s consideration of what a city
should look and feel like and what serious questions arise from urbanism in the 21st century,” Smith
offered.
Donna Dennis’ room-sized installation of a New York City Subway Station, Subway with Silver
Girders (1981- 82) highlights the issues surrounding massive infrastructure that supports our urban life
and asks us to consider what is on view and what is hidden in these settings. Pedro Cabrita Reis’ Blind
Cities #2 (1998) examines how architecture sometimes overshadows the actual process of building and
asks us to consider the hands that actually built our buildings. Marjetica Potrc looks at the ways in which
people transform the cities in which they live into spaces and habitats that work for them. Her work
addresses issues of sustainability and resource management from an anti-establishment viewpoint. Potrc
will be represented in the exhibition by an installation of her Aranya Core Unit (2002) and a set of her
prints, Cities (2001). Finally, 16 recent photographs by German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski from
his Case Study project (2008) examines the housing structures he witnessed in the Baseco Compound, a
squatter camp near the Port of Manila and home to an estimated 70,000 people.
The Tampa Museum of Art will open its new facility with a diverse selection of exhibitions –
featuring traveling shows, loaned works, and objects from its collection of contemporary photography
and Greek and Roman Antiquities.
ABOUT THE MARTIN Z. MARGULIES FOUNDATION
The Martin Z. Margulies Foundation was organized 27 years ago with the mission to provide arts
education free of charge to the public. The Foundation has supported many organizations throughout
Florida and the nation. Martin Z. Margulies is a successful South Florida luxury real estate developer
who began collecting art in 1976, and has gone on to build one of the major collections of contemporary
American and European art in the world today. The Margulies Collection is considered by curators,
critics, artists and dealers as one of the most important collections of its kind. Focusing on seminal
works by important artists, the collection includes European Modernism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop,
Minimalism, Conceptual, Arte Provera, Video, Vintage and Contemporary Photography.
Margulies is a grand founder of the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami. He has been
affiliated with many prestigious art institutions that include: serving on the Collector’s Committee of the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the board of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Commission. Margulies received a Doctorate of Fine Arts, Honoris Causa, from Florida International
University, Miami. Most recently, he was honored by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New
York City as a distinguished leader of the global art community. While many of the paintings and
smaller sculptures in the collection are displayed throughout his own home in Key Biscayne, FL, The
Margulies Collection of photography, video installations and larger sculptures has been housed since
1999 in a 45,000-square-foot retro-fitted warehouse in Miami’s Wynwood Art District.
ABOUT THE TAMPA MUSEUM OF ART
The new 66,000-square-foot Tampa Museum of Art opens in February 2010 in downtown
Tampa’s Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. Designed by San Francisco architect Stanley Saitowitz, the
building features a shimmering pierced aluminum exterior with LED lighting, a first floor entrance that
greets visitors with a dramatic, three-story atrium, and seven interior state-of-the-art gallery spaces that
feature innovative translucent ceilings and polished stone floors. The museum will provide the
region with a variety of world-class traveling exhibitions, a growing collection of contemporary and
classical art, expanded educational programs and access to scenic outdoor events along Tampa's
Riverwalk. The Tampa Museum of Art was founded in 1979.
Images available upon request